


Hold Fast

by i_claudia



Series: Check/Mate [6]
Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Age of Sail, Alternate Universe - Historical, Jealousy, M/M, The Royal Navy, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-07
Updated: 2011-10-07
Packaged: 2017-11-05 21:44:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/411323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/i_claudia/pseuds/i_claudia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>William had never meant to pry.</p><p>
  <i>In these bodies we will live<br/>In these bodies we will die<br/>Where you invest your love<br/>You invest your life</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hold Fast

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on LJ [here](http://i-claudia.livejournal.com/78549.html). (7 October 2011)

William had never meant to pry. He had only thought to let Merlin know a note from Sir Joseph had come and that he would be stepping out for the afternoon, and Merlin should not let the staff of their usual lodging house keep supper warm for him. Habit alone made him pause before the door, which had been left ajar; terrible habit, which kept him from knocking at the sound of quiet voices within.

Merlin had spent the morning occupied in half-heartedly tuning his violin, less involved in the task than he might have been, one ear cocked listening. Twice he had heard footsteps upon the stair, and stopped, looking up eagerly toward the door, but it had not opened, and both times he had resumed his task with more concentrated dedication than before. He had wished several times that he had not burnt the letter, so that he might still check the time it had suggested, but as he could not reconstruct words from ashes, he had sat and picked at his strings, wondering what could possibly have happened, if perhaps he had read the date wrong entirely.

Arthur had in fact been delayed in his arrival by the First Secretary, who had been overly effusive in his thanks for the speech Arthur had made the day before regarding the necessity of a well-funded service—that the Navy deserved only the best Parliament could afford as Britain’s wooden walls—the empire’s best defence—and by the time Arthur had been free to go about his business the morning had already run its course, making him unforgivably late to the private appointment he had been dreaming of all week. But Merlin, when Arthur had finally arrived, was quick in his forgiveness, and equally quick in calling for a bit of sustenance to have with their coffee, that Arthur might regain his strength after the encounter: the Secretary was a notoriously formidable enemy, but far worse to have as an ally and more terrible still as a partner in conversation. 

They felt secure enough in Merlin’s sitting room to let a few of their careful illusions drop, and leant into each other almost unconsciously, as flowers incline their faces to the sun; each of them enjoying the gradual build of the anticipation between them, their desire burning a low flame which increased but slowly as they conversed.

This was the scene which William now discovered—one which another man, less attuned to the subtleties of human nature, might have thought innocent. But Will had not studied mankind for the better part of his life without learning something about the well-trod paths of men’s necessary lies, nor had he spent the past three years blind to the eagerness Merlin betrayed whenever the post reached whatever ship they might be on; the convenient ways in which Merlin never failed to disappear when they put in at certain ports. 

Merlin laughed—a clear, glad sound—reaching up to swipe his thumb across Arthur’s face to brush crumbs from the corner of Arthur’s mouth, and William felt something cramp viciously within him, twisting his bowels. Preoccupied with this, he had decided upon retreat as the far better part of valour when he trod upon a loose floorboard which made a noise that, while not loud, carried well enough to make the occupants of the room go silent. All hope of withdrawing thus destroyed, Will knocked properly, and steeled himself for the encounter.

Merlin knew at once, looking at Will’s face, that he had been discovered. He stepped out into the corridor after a quiet word to Arthur, closing the door properly behind him, and stood before William, both of them silent as they regarded each other.

“Will,” Merlin said, but the same unpleasant twist wrenched itself again, and Will found he could not bear to hear Merlin speak with such familiarity.

“I’ve only come to say I shall be occupied at Whitehall until evening,” he broke in, a barbed reminder that his good fortune and his life’s work belonged to forces greater than either he or Merlin, that he possessed the methods and the means to change both their lives permanently. “Perhaps longer; Sir Joseph will undoubtedly wish to review my latest despatches.”

“I see,” said Merlin, glancing at the door before he remembered himself, and folded his hands together. He was not in uniform, the shirt a familiar one Will had seen him mending a hundred times at sea, and his feet were disgracefully bare. They stood in silence again, the conversation continuing without words, until Will could bear it no further.

“If you wish me to treat this as nothing, it will be so,” he said, relenting, though not without a little bitterness. “I am, after all,” he added, curling one corner of his mouth, “well-accustomed to the keeping and forgetting of secrets.”

Merlin looked ill at this, pale and hollow around the face. “It isn’t—” he began, and stopped himself with an effort, revising his words. “Perhaps that would be best.”

William swallowed through the hot bile that had collected low in his throat—he would need to prescribe a dose for himself tonight; perhaps a doubled dose would be called for, or he would never sleep—said: “Very well,” and turned to take his leave.

“Will—” Merlin called before Will could take more than three or four steps, and Will looked back, unable to stop himself. Merlin bit the side of his cheek, undecided, and after a moment merely said, “Thank you, dear friend.”

“You’ve nothing to thank me for,” Will replied, too harsh, and nearly ran the rest of the way down to the street. 

He was blind to the usual pleasures to be found on the familiar road, a foul mood overtaking him to press dark red veils across his vision. After barking too fiercely at the young servant who showed him to Sir Joseph’s office, he reprimanded himself for the gross display of temper, and forced his mind into a frozen calm which despite his best efforts did not last beyond returning to the lodging house to find Merlin’s door shut and firmly locked. He paused, but could hear nothing, and finally was forced to give it up and retire to his own rooms, where he sat uselessly awake, pacing, his mind and indeed his very being equally occupied in the basest kind of uproar.

He and Merlin had been no more than boys when they began, green as the countryside they had run from. Will had stopped at the shore, lured aside by the promise of books and fame, but Merlin had gone on, had taken to the sea he had never once laid eyes on before setting foot on his first ship. 

(Merlin, Will thought, staring at the fire which was burning quietly to embers, was forever leaving everyone else behind.) 

Yet the two of them had started together, worked like devils and written letters back and forth even as Will went to London and then the Continent to learn the secrets of the human body and the mind, proud of his travels until Merlin—never one to be content for long—wrote to say he had gone all the way around the world. He had not written it to gloat, had never thought to make Will small: quite the contrary. Merlin had stood up for Will when they were children and the other boys had thought to tease Will about his name or his parents, and when he gained his first command and learned that the ship was without a surgeon, he had written to Will at once—and Will, at loose ends when he received the letter, a penniless scholar, his rising star trapped by an affair gone sour, had accepted gladly.

Will wondered, now, whether he still would have accepted, had he known the sort of secrets he would be asked to carry in the name of his country—had he known this newest secret, which he carried not for the King but for the life of his dearest friend—a secret which cut at him cruelly from every angle.

He could not say, sunk deep into these private meditations, how much time had passed before he heard quiet steps on the stair, heard Merlin’s door open and close, but the fires in the grate had burnt almost entirely to ashes, and there had been no sound from the rest of the house for some time. Will placed his elbow on the table, and rested his face in his hand, rubbing at his eyes, which ached. He did not think of where Merlin might have been, whether he had been out with Arthur—or if he had stayed _in_ with Arthur, whether they had retreated to some secret place to...to...

What had Merlin been thinking? What had been in his mind when he began this madness—what was in his head now, that he carried on, careless of the consequences?—now, of all times, with the colours of a flag officer within his reach? With what could Merlin hope to justify this dalliance, when everyone knew his name was at long last first on the list for any true ship of the line which had need of a commander?

Perhaps Merlin did not know...but William doubted this; Merlin had never been particularly adept at politics but even he was intelligent enough to realise the truth in rumours. And yet he persisted in this affair—Will did not wish to dwell on how long Merlin might have been risking everything, risking his very life—and for what? For the comfort of a familiar warmth in his bed—a strange notion, given how rarely they were in any port for long—or for the mere pleasures of the flesh, which any dockside wench would provide...though perhaps that solution was over-simple, given that Merlin was...that Lord Arthur...

Will flushed, hot and angry, and followed that thought no further.

He did not understand, and could not bear to ask Merlin for an explanation, could not stand to hear if Merlin thought himself to be in love—that most senseless of mental infirmities!—whether it was this thought which drove Merlin to continue when one word might ruin him entirely. Lord Pendragon was fast becoming a clever politician in the mould of his father, and would soon be the star of Parliament, Will knew; his name was oft spoken in the highest circles. Surely Arthur would cut Merlin to drift alone the moment a whisper was heard—he was not the sort of man, Will felt, to risk himself for anyone. Members of the peerage were all alike: self-serving, heartless cronies loyal to no one but themselves. Arthur would surely turn Merlin to the wolves were he to feel himself threatened, were suspicions to be raised—

Will half-rose from his seat, feeling himself on the cusp of rashness—but no—he could not—he had no proof—and he himself had only instinct to show for his sentiments regarding Arthur—he could not be sure of the man’s true reaction. This thought served only to increase his passion, but he subsided once more in the face of his own impotence, his constant inability to wound Merlin, however indirectly. Merlin, who had given him so much and never asked for the slightest thing in repayment—Merlin, who was the closest William had to family—Merlin, who still kept secrets from his oldest friend, who had never thought to let Will see his entire being, who kept himself calmly, carefully contained even as Will bared his very soul in the confidence of strong spirits and Merlin’s private cabin.

Will barely heeded the cheerful morning salutations of the sparrows outside his window. He heard the soft, familiar rap at the door, but made no move to answer it. The ship would not sail for three days still, and he had made no appointments that would not wait, and he wished, just for today, to speak to no one at all. 

He sat listening, calmed somewhat by the sounds of the city coughing itself to wakefulness, and thought of Merlin, and of Arthur, and of the sort of joy he had begun to despair of ever knowing; and, not long after the bells had struck nine, at last succumbed to uneasy sleep. He could not love Arthur, but the love he bore for Merlin—his brother in all but blood—was strong enough to begin already the slow wearing away of this bitterness, softening its edges until it was little more than one more soft ache he would tuck away into his soul.


End file.
